Power Mean Inequalities and Sums of Squares

We study the limits of the cones of symmetric nonnegative polynomials and symmetric sums of squares, when expressed in power-mean or monomial-mean basis. These limits correspond to forms with stable expression in power-mean polynomials that are globally nonnegative (resp. sums of squares) regardless of the number of variables. We introduce partial symmetry reduction to describe the limit cone of symmetric sums of squares, and reprove a result of Blekherman and Riener (Discrete Comput Geom 65:1–36, 2020) that limits of symmetric nonnegative polynomials and sums of squares agree in degree 4. We use tropicalization of the dual cones, first considered in the context of comparing nonnegative polynomials and sums of squares in Blekherman et al. (Trans Am Math Soc 375(09):6281–6310, 2022), to show differences between cones of symmetric polynomials and sums of squares starting in degree 6, which disproves a conjecture of Blekherman and Riener (Discrete Comput Geom 65:1–36, 2020). For even symmetric nonnegative forms and sums of squares we show that the cones agree up to degree 8, and are different starting with degree 10. We also find, via tropicalization, explicit examples of symmetric forms that are nonnegative but not sums of squares in the limit.